 Excellencies, distinguished guests, including to our many colleagues who I understand are online, welcome to this event on migration is about people and MGI stories of policy impact. I first of all have to thank the governments of the United States, Brazil, Nepal and Mauritius who've joined us today to share their experience using the migration governance indicators to inform policy change and the positive impact that it's had on migrants and communities. And I just want to pause a bit to share a bit of a personal reflection. So for me, MGI was a bit of a hidden, like a hidden golden egg because when you hear the term MGI, it sounds very technical and when you hear indicators, it sounds a bit geekish. But then kind of almost by accident, David, my colleague, decided that he was going to give me a briefing on the MGI. I have a background in result space management, so I was fully ready for a very technical discussion on indicators and instead found out about this really, really great tool that facilitates a process that brings together all of the departments of government. So a whole, I mean really putting into practice a whole of government approach. It's also very demand driven by the governments and it allows a comprehensive way to deal with the multidimensional aspects of migration. And ever since I realized this, I have been such a, well I'd like to think, I hope my colleagues think, I'm such a strong champion for the use of MGI, though I will vote for a different name if anybody has great ideas. I've been such a champion of this and deeply appreciative of how this has enabled IOM to support member states with their migration policies or integrating migration across other policies. So it's a, personally it's a great pleasure for me to be here today. I also want to thank our moderator for this session, Matt Samuel from The Economist Impact for being with us. The Economist Impact is our MGI partner for almost a decade and we truly value this partnership and are looking forward to seeing it grow even more in the coming years. And before I give the floor to our very distinguished panel, and apart from being distinguished, they're also my, I'd like to say my friends. I have just a few words to say on migration policy and governance and why it matters. And at the end of the day it goes back to the title of this event which is Migration is about people. And that's really why it matters because we want better outcomes for people. We want to fully harness the potential of migration. And we want to support governments in achieving this potential. Too often it's seen as something abstract and far removed from daily life, but we know that systemic change and deep transformations are not impossible, are impossible without improving policies and institutional frameworks. For IOM, as we engage with our member states and partners to support better migration policies and good migration governance, the central message is clear. Migration policy is about people. And you would have heard our DGA MePoP speaking on day one of the council about her vision and people first is at the center of her vision. Sound migration policies are essential if we're to realize the promise of migration and as recently documented by the World Bank in its 2023 development report, migrants can contribute much to the destination's economy efficiency and growth over the long term. About 17% of healthcare workers in the United States, 12% in the UK, 79% in GCC countries are foreign born. Remittances sent by migrants reached $840 billion, which is more than foreign direct investment and ODA respectively. And if you add the informal channels, estimates are that remittances are actually above a trillion dollars a year. The long term benefits of immigration include increased entrepreneurship and innovations, stronger links for international trade and investment, and better provision of services such as education and healthcare. All of us in this room know that when migration is well managed, we can unlock its tremendous potential in a way that benefits migrants themselves, communities of origin, transit, as well as destination. So as I started with, after more than two years in IOM, I've had the tremendous privilege to meet with many migrants and listen to their stories, most continue to face hurdles as they move to escape conflict disasters and the impact of climate change in search of better life and new opportunities. And they're ready to contribute to their communities. And that is why migration is about people and how we can serve them. I've also met with countless governments who have the utmost commitment to create regular pathways for migrants and their families. We heard this today in many of the statements that member states have, that member states made. And in many instances, governments and migrants want the same outcome, but don't have the right structures to make it happen. Working together, we can find the solutions that are not just, or as our DG says, the triple-win solutions. And this is where the migration governance indicators come in. And as I mentioned, it helps governments take a hard look at the policies they have in place to manage migration. To date, 109 countries, 91 local governments have participated in an assessment using the MGI, demonstrating a truly global footprint. Now, in the interest of time, I'm going to pass it back to the moderator. I have a few more notes on examples from Ethiopia, cities in Moldova, the Marshall Islands. But the purpose of all of you being here today is to hear from the panelists. And so I will stop my opening there. Welcome once again, and I hand over to you, Mertus. Thank you. Thank you so much, DDG Daniels. And thank you, IOM, and especially the MGI team, for inviting me, but for hosting this fantastic event. As DDG Daniels mentioned, my name is Matus Sammel. I'm a senior manager at Economist Impact, the research arm of the Economist Group. And we have been working with the MGI team for the past many years on developing the MGI process and the program. And I'm extremely excited to be here today to discuss some of the results and the applications in real life and the experiences from our really distinguished panel. So thank you and thank you, everyone, in the room and tuning in online. But without further ado, I'll just quickly introduce our amazing panel and then we'll just jump right into it. So we have with us Ms. Elizabeth Campbell, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the US Department of State. Welcome and thank you. She is responsible for humanitarian assistance in Africa and multilateral coordination and external affairs. And prior to this, Ms. Campbell was the director of ANRAS representative office in Washington, D.C. Thanks. Secondly, we are delighted to have Mr. Augusto Giaruda-Botelo, who is acting as the National Secretary of Justice and Vice Minister of Justice and Public Security in Brazil since 2023. And he's a lawyer specialized in economic criminal law with the University of Cumbria, University of Salamanca, and MFGV. And previously, he was an advisory board member at Human Rights Watch, as well as the Inocencia project. He's also involved with the Rede Libertada project created in 2019 to defend individuals and social organizations facing violations of fundamental rights. Thank you. Thirdly, we are delighted to have Mr. Keval Prasad Bhandari, who currently serves as the Secretary of Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security of Nepal and boasts a distinguished 32-year-long career in the civil service in the country. And Secretary Bhandari is responsible for overseeing key areas such as domestic labor relations, skills, as well as occupational safety and health. And prior to his current role, he held a position as a member secretary at the National Planning Commission, MPC, and has an extensive background in working at the Ministry of Finance. And last but absolutely not least, we're really delighted to have her Excellency Usha Chandidwarka Kanabadi, who is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Representative of Mauritius. And prior to her appointment in Geneva, her Excellency had been serving as a Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mauritius since 2015. And prior to that, she was the head of the Multilateral Economic Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade, and Regional Integration in Port Louise from 2007 to 2013. So thank you, everyone. Really appreciate you being here. And just a very quick note, as you can imagine, the event is being filmed and photographed for communication purposes. So hopefully everybody's OK with that. But without further ado, let us just jump right into it. And I'm really excited to hear your insights and experiences. And Ms. Campbell, let me start with you. The US government obviously has been the main donor behind the MGI since the very beginning in 2016. And I know that your government has been using MGI in innovative ways and insights from MGI to inform program designs and interventions. Could you just tell us a bit more about your approach and perhaps the value of MGI and the insights for evidence-based programming and really capturing the needs of the people on the ground? Thank you. Sure. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be here and to speak about something that is of great importance to the State Department and the US government and a key partnership that we have with IOM. So one enormous value add of the MGI is the fact that it provides a comprehensive baseline for migration management. So I think we all know how difficult it is to define something like migration management in clear, measurable terms, let alone to identify its quality or success. So the MGI has taken a complex, qualitative idea and developed a tool to measure it. So in addition to the MGI, we at the State Department also fund three regional migration programs through IOM in Africa, in Asia, and the Americas. So as the MGI has grown and increased its coverage, we've seen closer integration between the MGI assessments and these regional migration programs. So for example, after participating in MGI assessments, several countries have worked with IOM under these regional programs to develop comprehensive national migration policies that adopt a whole of government approach. One specific example comes from Southern Africa, where IOM supported a partner government, their ministerial committee on migration to develop an action plan to realign the existing migration programs with the MGI assessment report for that country. So we think that it's poised to compare assessment outcomes across regions and identify individual areas of work that will have great cross-cutting impact. And all of this means, in short, that we can approach the various regional dialogues in which we're all a part and other partnerships with a toolkit and a recommended playbook of information to plan for efficient and effective new programming. Thank you so much. It's really exciting to hear both the integration with other programs and also the application on the ground and using the information and insights for program deliveries. Thank you so much. And just turning Mr. Botello to you. Obviously, in Brazil, the migration landscape and context has changed significantly in recent years, which obviously requires sort of new measures and responses. And I know that MGI process has also been an important sort of tool for providing the analysis and reality check on the ground. Could you tell us how your sort of policies, new approaches are responding to the challenges that the country is facing in this area today? Well, first of all, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you all. Let me be quite honest here. As you'll see, my background is on criminal law. I've been working as a criminal lawyer for the past 20 years. When I was appointed as National Secretary of Justice, who is the one in charge for the migration and refugee policy in my country, I knew. And my knowledge about migration was about the same as I had on biology, which is close to zero. In 11 months, I had to learn a lot to put in practice the new policy on migration, refugee, and state lenses that we are putting together in Brazil. So with that, I can easily answer that. Without indicators, without the work of IOM, without the work of MGI, I was probably more lost than ever. So it's fundamental that we have your work and the partnership that my country has with IOM to help us build, as you said, a country that has been changing a lot when you think about migration patterns and migration flow. The Brazilian migration law is actually quite new. It's from May 2017, and it changed completely the way that the Brazilian law faces the scenario. The previous law was very focused on security aspects and only containing very restrict ways to promote migration. Today our law is fully based on human rights as a principle, and especially bringing to all migrants and refugees, all the access, universal access to all the services, programs, and social benefits that our country has at disposal to absolutely everybody. So the new law changed the migratory reality in Brazil. This was the basis, and this was the response that gave a positive answer to the Afghan and Ukrainian diaspora that we had around the country, also from Haiti and Venezuela. And now what we are dealing with, a new completely different way to look at a national policy. I think I'll be able to answer this in a better way in the next question. But what we are trying to do in a completely new way of building a policy, we had more than 200 organizations from civil society helping us to put this policy together. We had the help of IOM. We had the help of the whole academia in Brazil. We had more than 1,400 written suggestions to this policy that we could transform these suggestions into a policy that will soon be presented. But without the work of MGI and without indicators, our construction will be much, much more harder to do. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And we'll definitely delve deeper into the question of bringing in stakeholders at various levels. I think that's really, really critical. And but also thank you for bringing up the sort of role of MGI as setting the baseline particularly in the times of change. And we all see that the rapid changes that are happening around the world really require to having that sort of common understanding. And that's really great to hear from your experience. Turning to you, Mr. Bandari, obviously Nepal in recent years has been among the leaders in terms of the discussion on migration and development policies and including becoming a global compact champion. And now you are developing the 16th National Development Plan. Could you tell us a little bit more about the sort of broad outlines of the plan and how perhaps MGI results could contribute to informing and shaping your approach and your thinking when it comes to that migration development dynamics? Thank you, moderator. It is interesting that Nepal still have a young population. Every year, 500,000 Nepali youth come to labor market. But the national capacity of observed less than 100,000. So 400,000 Nepali youth need to seek their employment abroad. And not only for the labor market, every year 100,000 plus Nepali student also go overseas for higher studies. And this statistics is out of India because India and Nepal have a special border relations. So many people can go to India and Indian people can come to Nepal. So Nepal's population is a young population are serving globally. More than 140 countries Nepali youth are working in unskilled, skilled, or high-skilled job. So migration is one of the great contributor of Nepal's socioeconomic area, socioeconomic field. The remittances, scores, it's equivalent to 25% of national GDP. That means migration is one of the important pillar of Nepali's economy. And the running 15th plan and coming 16th plan, focus for safe migration, sending youth with skills and occupational safety with language also, and providing other services, safer migration. And Nepal also learns the reintegration. After completing two years, three years as a labor market serving in other country, people come back home and they start their own business or they start working in home country. So this entire cycle involves Nepal's economic development. Even during COVID, Nepal's economy is not that much down because the people who are working abroad send money for their families for living and treatment and all the things. So countries graduating in 2026 from LDC to middle income country. And for this, economic vulnerability and human asset is completely dependent on the remittance of the people, families. So for the 16th plan, we are introducing more schemes for the skills, especially for the dropout childrens who drop school in middle education. And for other people who wants to go other country, specialized training, skills, language, and these are the activities and involving with the regional and global migration forum to advocacy these things and making agreement, bilateral agreement, to the country where Nepali people are going to work and providing them social security in their country also. So these are the activities going on. Yeah, wonderful. And thank you. It's really great to hear also the regional dynamics that I would like to dig deeper into a little bit. But just now moving on, Madam Ambassador, as you can imagine, in one of the latest MGI reports for Mauritius, climate change came out as one of the top priorities for the country. Obviously, as a small island-developing state, Mauritius is at the forefront of some of these challenges stemming from climate change, especially as they relate to migration. So could you just tell us a little bit more about how you are addressing some of these challenges and the interaction between migration policy and climate change? Thank you very much, moderator. This is to a man. I don't know why. Thanks, moderator. And thank you all for taking time to be here. You know, before the MGI 2018, which was the first of Mauritius, Mauritius had done something else. We had in 2017 what we call the third national communication on environment and on climate change. And that third communication actually already spoke about migration and climate change, a whole section on that. Because we're already witnessing a number of things that are happening in the area. When you're a small island, you're exposed in any case. So it's going to happen. You don't wait for people to tell you what's going to happen. What did we do? We started working with the IUM quite a lot, in fact. And then there were the broader things and the smaller things. The broader things, all of us do. The climate change Act 2020, the master plan 2022, the decision by government to accelerate the reduction of its emissions by 2030 by 40%, as though we were going to change the world. But still, we wanted to do it sort of thing, you know? And then the smaller things, which to me are important, because I think in all that we do, as you said, migration is about people. It's the people that you want to save. So on the smaller things, I want to pick up a couple of projects and share with you. Alternative livelihoods. We went down to the fishermen in a very small village in Mauritius called Rivière des Gallies, where you have the small stones, the galley sort of thing. And there, because the fishermen would have had to move from that region. The focus was not on finding alternative livelihoods for the fishermen, but for their spouses. Because we thought the fishermen were not going to be wanting to move so much. So it was very interesting that the bank got together with the government and funded some of the women. And they started producing something, a green outcome, a green output, which was using palm leaves of Mauritius and Rachmanus, there are plenty of palm leaves in Mauritius, making plates, disposable plates for the palm leaves. Then we had a second situation in Oreg Island. And Oreg Island is a dependency of Mauritius. There again, the fishermen didn't really want to be reconverted. So we created a marine park and we got the fishermen in the southeast Oreg Island to do that. What helped was this mapping between IOM and Mauritius, our vulnerable spaces and then, you know, vulnerable communities so that you could match them together at that one to make it work. Then, of course, there was some other interesting things. In Catoceau, again, a very small village on the east coast, we created its frequent flooding. Frequent flooding. So we created what we call a sanctuary. Using alternative construction methods, it's the first of its kind in the Indian Ocean. So it gives sanctuary to 1,000 people from frequent flooding and it is there. So we want to use it as an example to do it again in the region. Hopefully IOM can help us take this to the other islands in the Indian Ocean that you don't look at enough sufficiently. So you look at us, please, on this one. We can replicate that model as well. There have been other things as well and two interesting things I want to share with you is because people who are always surprised is working with IAEA and working with Sadek. With Sadek, it was a vulnerable assessment of agriculture, making crop projections where you go, disaster risk reduction. With IAEA, it is getting my vegetables to become more resistant to heat and climate change. People don't even imagine IAEA is doing this. They're doing this in many countries, but you need to share all the time so they know they can go to IAEA and do. And then of course, in the budget in 2019-20, we decided we were going to pay for relocating people where landslides had taken place. So you have that. In the meanwhile, coastal works, you know, 20 kilometers, priority areas, all that's been done. But government is very much hands-on because you're so small and you can only displace people in this amount of area sort of thing. Thank you. Wonderful thing. And these are absolutely extraordinary examples. So really, thank you for bringing those up. And I think that the point on understanding the vulnerable communities more holistically where it comes to women and spouses and other perhaps members of the community that are not on the forefront of many people's thoughts is really important. And I'll definitely would like to sort of follow up on that and dig a little deeper in that. But turning to you, Ms. Campbell, when we are thinking about the sort of regular pathways, obviously the U.S. has been playing a key role in the discussion and discussing the sort of creating opportunities for people to move through these regular pathways. In your view, how can MGI and these approaches be helpful in terms of helping you, helping the governments to really think about creating opportunities for people to move around in a safe and orderly and regular manner? Thank you. At this stage, one of the MGI's greatest strengths is its regional coverage. So for example, in Central and South America, we have near complete geographic coverage. Cities in this region have also undertaken local MGI assessments in really large numbers. The same is true in Western, Eastern and Southern Africa. So this means that the MGI provides comprehensive coverage of regions with both significant internal migration and high potential for the development or expansion of intra-regional mobility. So strengthening regular pathways to all possible destination countries is of course very important to explore, but increasing intra-regional pathways will likely allow for the greatest impact on migration management with the best outcomes for migrants. So after participating in the MGI, many countries have undertaken further work with IOM, to increase their migration governance capacity. And this underscores IOM's position as a mutual trusted partner. They're well situated to act as a convener on migration dialogues, and to evaluate regional migration management trends, and identify key areas of mutual interest that if addressed, might have the greatest impact on expanding these regular pathways. It would be interesting to see the MGI organize an assessment of existing and potential regular pathway opportunities within different regions. Based on the publicly available MGI report data, for example, which groups of countries present the most strategic and efficient opportunities from a logistical migration governance perspective. Countries might also opt in to collaborate with IOM on policy or other capacity changes identified by the MGI that will directly impact specific or new existing pathways. Wonderful, thank you. And that's a fantastic suggestion. We'll definitely take that on board. And I think that element of intra-regional migration and the requirements for bringing stakeholders together in that one dialogue is really, really important. And Mr. Boteiro, you mentioned that obviously within the new policy, it required a lot of work at which stakeholders, of course, different levels. So I know that local governments in Brazil have been given a sort of key role to play and play the key role in this process. Could you tell us a little bit more about that process and that engagement and how you and your government work with local authorities and the stakeholders on local level to really ensure that policies reflect the needs of people on the ground and are also implemented on the ground? Well, I think this is now our biggest challenge. Of course, that migrants and refugees, they enter any country through their borders if it is from land or air, but they don't stay in the place that they naturally get inside the country. So what the federal government is responsible for migration in a macro comprehensive way defining rules for visas, entry and stay, naturalization, protection of refugees. Local governments, on the other hand, they are responsible, at least they are supposed to be responsible. As of course, they are much closer to the population than we are for directly helping and integrating the population and communities. The demands that individuals have in relation to public authorities, they first arrive in the cities, in the municipalities. And that was quite a challenge, trying to bring the cities together with the federal government. And the way that we managed to do that, it's quite recent. We launched that in November now, it's called the Network of Welcoming Cities. It's a national network of welcoming cities. It's an initiative that reaffirms the national guideline to decentralize democratic and participatory governance in the implementation of this new national policy. The main objectives here are to support the development of institutional capacities for local integration of the migrant refugees and stateless person, as well to expand the institutionalization of municipal policy for migrants. By establishing these spaces in the local areas, we tend to expand the dialogue and put the cities in the leading role by sharing with them technical support, sharing with them resources, and making them the priority decision maker of how to manage the migration that, as I said in the beginning, cross the border, but by the end of the day, we'll stay in a city, we'll stay in a state. So this is our, as I said, our biggest challenge, but calling the cities more closer to the federal government was the way that we planned to do this new policy. That's a wonderful example, and I think that the idea that, yes, this is the challenge for a lot of countries, a lot of regions, how to cooperate across different levels and stakeholders, but the idea of putting regional authorities at the very center is really exciting, and I love the name of the National Network of Welcoming Cities, so definitely something for us to think about. Mr. Bandari, you mentioned the role of Nepal in terms of the regional migration, and also actually the MGI in 2019 found that Nepal played a very active role in regional labor migration processes, and in terms of advocating and protecting the migrant workers. Could you please elaborate a little bit, tell us a little bit more about that role and that you have played, and the role to really strengthen and continue to strengthen the plans for regional dialogue and coordination, particularly on labor migration and regular pathways. Thank you. Nepal is a active member of regional dialogue. Processes are Abu Dhabi dialogue. Bali process on people smuggling, trafficking in person and related transnational crimes, and Colombo process. These three regional dialogue are there in Nepal actively participating, all three forums. Nepal is a founding member of this forum, and Nepal was a chair from 2017 to 2021 on Colombo process. During that time, Kathmandu declaration was made. Participation of the 12 labor sending countries of that region. The safe, regular and managed migration was the motto of the theme of the Kathmandu declaration where we prescribe, ensuring regular pathways for migrant workers, sustained joint effort towards no recruitment costs to migrant workers, strengthen grievances mechanism, and remove any obstacles that may inhibit migrant worker access to justice by using technologies, maximizing partnership with the countries of destination and other stakeholders, promote migrant worker and their families access to social protection throughout the migration process, and joint effort to provide gender responsive and evidence-based information for migrant worker at all stages. So these are the main topic of the Kathmandu declaration and we are working on that. And for streamlining these things in the national plan, Nepal actively working with the recruiting agency, skill agency, other related stakeholder, including civil society and NGO. So how we make safer migration, and how people came back home after completion of their contract. So in this process, Nepal, so next week we have the meeting of the Kolombo process committee group. I possibly joined there in Kolombo. So Nepal and other country, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, even India is doing excellent, providing excellent human resources in global labor market. So the people of our continent has right to receive the facility social protection healthcare because they provide service in the destination country and pay the tax. So the social protection is also one of the issue presently we are discussing with the recipient country. And streamlining these things, Nepal actively involved in the domestic process of making, finalizing migrant labor policy and the process of drafting of national migration policy. I myself a disaster replace from the Himalayan region 55 years ago, I from the disaster replace from the landslide in the Himalayan region. So many people who are migrating, not only for the job, but the climate change is one of the reason that people migrate from one area to another area. The last census shows that between two census, five million people have internal migration. So we have to take care of this from the villages to city center, city center to provincial headquarter and the national headquarter capital. So engaging them. Any people who wants to go abroad for work or studies, we have to manage them by whatever means available in country and what is the capacity of country we are trying to manage these things. And that's a really interesting and I guess encouraging example of that sort of balancing between that sort of regional cooperation and also really incorporating or aligning it with the internal policies and politics. So I'm sure challenges remain, but really, really encouraging. So hopefully we can use that as a positive example. So IOM is technically supporting the Ministry of Labor Employment for this process, drafting national migration policy, finalizing labor migration policy and other activities in all process. IOM is there. And putting that to those sort of social services and security at the center of that is really, really great to see. And so Madam Ambassador, sticking to that question of labor migration and you mentioned a couple of examples where the sort of alternative employment was obviously at the center of attention. And we know that from the MGI's as well that Mauritius has been among the leaders in terms of that sort of gender sensitive migration policies. And I know you touched upon that in your first response and I'm sure there are many challenges, but could you just share your view in your experience how Mauritius is addressing these issues and perhaps if there are gaps remaining in the legal road are the challenges that you are facing? Let's look at the room. The majority of women. Gender is always a difficult one. I have a few brothers from Gabo and Gambia and I think Thailand, but not very many of them. You know, one of the things that statistics Mauritius does every year is an annual survey. And this is on employment and earnings of migrant workers. And that is desegregated by migratory status and by gender. So this is one thing that informs policymaking and decision making. So that is one concrete thing we do. But by far and large, you know, in US-born country your attention is divided in 50,000 things. The focus there is more on how do we protect best migrants as a whole, knowing well that in that chain the women migrants are the more vulnerable one. So if you go back and look at the employment rights at Mauritius, you see some interesting things. An employer is not allowed to do away with his agreement. He cannot terminate an agreement on the basis of race, color, et cetera. But also on sex, on gender, on pregnancy, on marital status, and on family responsibilities. There are not very many pieces of legislation around in the world that specifies all of this. And guess who handles most of the family responsibilities or pregnancy for that matter? So I think it is inherent in the right act itself that you can't be doing all of that. Then maybe I should add this. You know, IOM sends a lot of people outside to represent them. And I think it's an extremely important post. More than a decade ago, Mauritius started something called the ethical recruitment process. And this was thanks to a lady who was representing the IOM at that time, I was foreign secretary. She, Lalini, we are some who I believe my sister Daniel knows well. She was very influential with the government to say you're getting a lot of workers coming in from China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. You need to have an ethical recruitment process. People just cannot employ people anywhere. And she actually succeeded. So now you have all these standards which have been set. And then she was good because she knew the region well. She understood the region well. She actually got pursued at government that she needed to do more. And they have regular inspection. They created standards, like accommodation standards for unskilled workers. And you have inspectors that go and check these standards. And especially women. You know, when they go, again, the women, how they're, when you get unskilled women workers, it's really wanting exploitation if you're not careful. So you really have to have the legal framework that gives them the protection that they want. But there were two more things. One was social security benefits. So any foreign worker in Mauritius gets the same as a national worker, gets the same free health care treatment, et cetera. But also they contribute and their money is kept. And when they leave, they get the money back, their contribution with interest. And then there was a solution that when they leave, they will also suppose they pass away in between. So the next thing can get it. So in a way, again, women are very often protected either by being a worker, himself or herself, or again, by being the person who is receiving at the other end of this. And then one thing that we don't talk about is domestic violence and violence. So the domestic violence act in Mauritius again protects everybody. So not only the people in the country, but this as well. And in 2019, I read this from a government established an adult migrant shelter for people who had been victims of trafficking. And for children who were victims of trafficking, there was the Child Development Unit, but also drop-in centers in the capital city in Paul, we et cetera. So because Mauritius government has this culture of tripartism, working with all other stakeholders, they supported a lot of the faith organizations and other NGOs also supporting women migrants. So I think all in all, while we didn't have a direct policy aimed at migrants, I think the open approach made it possible for women to be well protected in the area. Thank you. That's fascinating to hear. And as you highlighted, it's a sort of holistic approach. So not necessarily just focusing on gender but realizing what it means, whether it comes to legal protection, social security, and all the elements that are disproportionately affecting women. So that's really great to hear that this sort of holistic approach actually can work. Although I'm sure it's not easy to sort of achieve and develop, but it can be effective and that's what we want to see. So I think just in the interest of time, we have covered a huge number of issues and topics. None of them are easy. So we talked about the employment, social services, the importance of creation of regional and regular pathways, regional cooperation, intra-regional, but also local and putting local stakeholders at the very center of decision making and also the sort of impact of climate change and what challenges and that creates specifically. So just want to thank you, everyone, thank the panel. And just wanted to see if there are any immediate questions or any comments from the audience. I believe that someone from Honduras had a comment on question, please. Gracias. Procederé a realizar mi intervención en español. No sé si hay algún problema con ello. Espero que no. Bueno, nosotros agradecemos la invitación a este evento. Honduras con mucho gusto queremos intervenir para destacar nuestra experiencia en el uso de los indicadores de gobernanza migratoria para diseñar nuestra política migratoria nacional. Sin duda, el proceso de elaboración de esta política ha sido un largo proceso, asistido afortunadamente por el equipo técnico de OIM en Honduras. Asimismo, la elaboración de esta política ha implicado una serie de consultas a nivel local y nacional para conocer los obstáculos que se enfrentan día a día las distintas autoridades gubernamentales y debemos reconocer que esta herramienta ha sido una importante guía para conducir los distintos diálogos. Honduras enfrenta ahora una serie de desafíos de carácter estructural, pero que también han sido reforzadas por situaciones como la pandemia del COVID y otros desastres ambientales, así como también la violencia y la criminalidad organizada que persiste en nuestra región. Y en este contexto, algo que ha sido fundamental es el compromiso de nuestro gobierno con la protección de los derechos humanos de las personas migrantes. Así, con el apoyo de OIM, se elaboró la política migratoria humanista que implica ordenar, coordinar y articular los mandatos institucionales nacionales y cuyo proceso inició en 2019, pero que atendiendo al compromiso de nuestro gobierno, su diseño avanzaba un paso muy rápido, teniendo ahora un documento que prioriza una serie de ejes transversales como la participación popular, la dequidad, los derechos humanos, el desarrollo territorial, la interculturalidad y consideraciones ambientales y ejes de acción, como la gestión integrada de las fronteras, el fortalecimiento de capacidades para identificar y atender a las personas víctimas de trata y tráfico. Y la protección de las personas en movilidad humana que se encuentran en situación de vulnerabilidad como los niños, niñas y adolescentes y las personas desplazadas por razones de violencia que en nuestro país son muchísimas. El carácter integral de esta política, sin duda, no sería posible sin la participación activa de autoridades nacionales y locales y la asistencia de OIM de otros actores, como lo hemos dicho anteriormente, y quisiéramos destacar el papel y la importancia que se ha tenido al respecto. Y creemos que todavía hay mucho por avanzar y que sin duda se requiere de mayor cooperación internacional en aspectos tales como el reforzamiento del rol de las alcaldías o autoridades municipales para que se incluyan a las comunidades y personas migrantes en tránsito en los planes de desarrollo municipales en línea con una de las experiencias descritas por este panel, por una de las personas panelistas. Y pues finalizamos diciendo que confiamos en que seguiremos contando con el apoyo de la OIM Honduras en la implementación de esta política, que es una siguiente etapa. Y agradecemos enormemente a los panelistas el día de hoy por compartir su experiencia en este día. Muchas gracias. Wonderful, thank you so much. That's really encouraging, really exciting to hear and also bringing in those various elements of environmental challenges and crimes and how this sort of holistic approach to migration really, really plays a critical role. So thank you so much for sharing that. Any other questions or comments from the forum? Yes, sorry, I can't see, but is there a comment, please? Just go ahead. Yes, I'm from Vietnam. We are interested in MGI, yes, and we think that it's very important to evaluate migration governance and also to measure the implementation of the global complex for migration. And right now, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam is discussing with our mission in Vietnam to conduct this. So I hope that in the time to come, we will use the toolkit to evaluate our current migration governance policies and we think that because to implement this, it requires inter-agency cooperation. So that's why in the next two weeks, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam will organize a annual review conference on the implementation of the global compact migration and we will discuss the MGI toolkit. So we will seek support from other agencies and ministries concerned so that we will submit our official request to IOM and also of course to our mission in Vietnam. And thank you for hosting this site event because it really served our interest. And I hope that we will receive some support from IOM and also countries concerned, especially those who are already using it. So we can learn from that. And it also to help to evaluate our current plan on GCM implementation. And also, I take this opportunity to extend my sincere thanks to the Bureau of Population, Jeffries and migration who is strong supporter for us within the framework of Asia Migration Program. I thank you. Wonderful, thank you. Thank you so much. And it's really exciting to hear and that's really, really encouraging that there is this interest and that there is ongoing work that's really, really important, really great to hear. And I'm sure I'll let IOM speak to that, but I'm sure there's a lot of potential there. So really thank you so much for sharing that. I think that in the interest of time we're coming to a close. So from my side, I just want to thank everyone again and I'll just hand over to DDG Daniels for closing remarks. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Maxus. And thank you everyone for participating. I have to start off with thanking our distinguished panelists from Nepal, from the US, from Brazil and from Mauritius. Not just for participating, but for really sharing the diverse perspective and, would I say, the way MGI has been used in their particular context. I'm not going to even attempt to summarize it and Matusiu had done a lot of that. I really like the idea, Elizabeth, of the using the existing MGI assessments to look at, well, the data from the assessments to look at good entry points for labor pathways. And I'm actually a bit bummed I didn't think of it myself, but certainly we'd be very keen to do that. A particular thank you to the delegate from Vietnam. That was a great question and exactly what we hoped that this side event would stimulate amongst member states. While you were asking the question, I was having a small mini-council here with my colleagues and certainly we can use MGI to evaluate the implementation of policies. We've done this in Cambodia. We're currently in discussion with Thailand. And then with regard to GCM plan of implementation, we have examples from Indonesia. So everything that I guess was on your, that you requested, we certainly have the capacity and experience to do. And then finally, in terms of peer-to-peer networks between member states, we don't have this in Asia. We do have it in the Americas, but we can certainly look into it for the Asia Pacific region. And then for my closing words, I really hope that all of you who've had the real opportunity to listen to what our panelists have shared and thinking about its application in your own context. I hope the diversity of what you've heard can help that. Certainly as IOM, we stand more than ready and available to support member states in the diverse application of MGI. And going back to the title that it's about people, yes, the focus is on policies, but it's on policies that work for people, and it's also on a process that involves people and involves a diverse range of stakeholders who all have a stake in the implementation of a policy or the outcomes of a policy. So we really hope you keep that in mind as you consider how to use MGI in your particular context, to work for the people in your context, whether it's migrants in your country, whether it's your migrants in other countries. Certainly we've heard about the regional perspective and cooperation that MGI has supported. So once again, thank you to our panelists and thank you to all of you for IOM. It's such an honor to be your partner and collaborator in making sure that migration works for everyone. Thank you.